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Tick Microbiome Characterization by Next-Generation 16S rRNA Amplicon Sequencing
Published on: August 25, 2018
Introducing SONS, a tool for operational taxonomic unit-based comparisons of microbial community memberships and
Patrick D Schloss1, Jo Handelsman
1Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
Abstract:
The recent advent of tools enabling statistical inferences to be drawn from comparisons of microbial communities has enabled the focus of microbial ecology to move from characterizing biodiversity to describing the distribution of that biodiversity. Although statistical tools have been developed to compare community structures across a phylogenetic tree, we lack tools to compare the memberships and structures of two communities at a particular operational taxonomic unit (OTU) definition. Furthermore, current tests of community structure do not indicate the similarity of the communities but only report the probability of a statistical hypothesis. Here we present a computer program, SONS, which implements nonparametric estimators for the fraction and richness of OTUs shared between two communities.
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